


Realms Above: Being the Tenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: The Sword [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:56:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. I: I’m Always on Tap

So, it was three weeks before my next mission, and, given that that stretch of time had seemed to alternate between three seconds and three eons, it was high time for another go, at least in my opinion. What Melegrethan thought, he didn’t disclose to me, though I’d venture that he disagreed. Enthusiasm isn’t really his thing, if you know what I mean.

My feverish impatience in this regard wasn’t because I thought that life in the camp was bad (I don’t; I like it here much better than I was expecting to); I was just terribly desirous of going back to the Realm at any opportunity, which Melegrethan has used to his advantage on many occasions, and will probably continue to use in future. I didn’t complain then and I’m still not complaining, because I get to keep going on missions this way.

The really weird part, about the telling at least, was that Melegrethan told me while we were sparring in front of a few dozen onlookers. It was a free-form fight with no holds barred, and I wasn’t doing so badly—by which I mean I actually made him work to get his licks in. I could defeat most of the other campers and not a few of the staffers in physical combat, but Melegrethan was Alamanast the Second’s Master-at-Arms for a very good reason, so he was universally acknowledged at camp as undefeatable.

Now, with some fighters, this would have been a lie used as a ploy to get me off my guard—and don’t think that that possibility didn’t cross my mind. In sharp contradistinction stood what I knew about Melegrethan. Put simply: he never lied directly, even when it would have served him better than honesty. Not that his timing in telling me I was on for another mission wasn’t necessarily tactical, either; I just knew he was telling me the truth about my going on another mission.

So, apparently I need to be available for missions at less than a moment’s notice, like the old Minutemen or a modern US Marine. I’ll definitely be keeping that in mind while my bruises heal. But they were only bruises, as Melegrethan wanted me to be fully capable for the mission. Besides, unnecessary injuries to the campers were a big no-no at the camp, even in a no-holds-barred match like that one was.

Melegrethan actually didn’t tell me very much about the mission, in any event. All he told me was that I needed to trust my instincts and that going in blind would be good practice at observation, orientation, decision and action in quick time. As I apparently needed such practice, it would be best for me to get some immediately, before I had need of it rather than after.

Sometimes, I hate what’s best for me, even when I know it’s best for me.

At any rate, it wasn’t until that evening that I was to depart, so there was plenty of time for me to worry over every angle of this new twist; or those I was aware of, at any rate. It rather hampered my art & craft sessions that afternoon (these forming the bulk of my individual curriculum), as my concentration was lacking. Of course, what usually hampered those sessions was that my talent was lacking, so it wasn’t like the world was denied another Matisse or anything.

Fortunately, my next turn on cooking duty (or “KP” as most of the staff called it) isn’t until week after next, so I didn’t inadvertently poison anyone or anything like that; nor was I working with any kind of machinery that might nibble away at an inattentive user. Still, I was decidedly distracted by my upcoming mission for all the rest of that day.

I haven’t put down here how Melegrethan sends me on my way; it’s because I haven’t yet seen how he does it, as I’m always facing away from him when he does it. This is probably purposeful on his part. I do know that the sending has to happen within a certain “launch window” (as it were), so he can’t just send me whenever and wherever he wishes. Also, given our current positions in the camp, he must always manufacture a believable excuse why I won’t be around for however long my mission takes me, though how he does that without lying is a conundrum and a half.

Both Melegrethan and the Coin before him usually send me to the dingy little inn called the Hand-Spread Stop, but this time when I emerged from the swirling grayness of the transit I found myself not in that humble place, but in a place I’d only been before on the most solemn of missions: the Chamber of the Tree. To say I was surprised at this would be a masterpiece of understatement, but I didn’t let my surprise stop me from trying to suss out why I was there and what I was expected to do on my mission.

It was still easily the most awe-inspiring place I’d ever been, not unlike a vast living green cathedral centered around a gnarled and knurled apple tree both ancient and massive. It was the kind of place that compelled you to keep silent, not out of fear but out of respect, and so I maintained a respectful silence as I unhurriedly walked the few steps over to the Tree itself.

The golden plaque at the Tree’s base was utterly blank; there was not the least indication there had ever been writing upon it. The last time I’d seen it, it had borne a certain inscription that had bearing on the endeavor I was to assist someone in undertaking. There had also been a Presence here to oversee that endeavor, but there was likewise no sign of it that I could discern. So, since there was evidently no help to be had there, I must needs look elsewhere.

My feet moved of their own accord down a familiar path, but the exit to the Realm was blocked by densely packed foliage that I knew better than to attempt to disturb. I could feel my heartbeat quicken in mingled anticipation and disappointment. So, I wasn’t going into the Realm proper at all—at least for now? Things grew more interesting by the minute. Endless possibilities began to parade through my mind, some of them laughable, some quite plausible.

As I contemplated what all this was supposed to teach me, a brightly glowing firefly popped out of the foliage blocking the exit. Another followed, and then more and more, until an entire cloud of tiny glowing dots whizzed and whirled around me in an indescribable swarm of lights. When they slowly began to move, I felt impelled to come with them, to stay in the halo of their light.

It was oddly dream-like, both at the time and in remembering it to write it down. The cloud of fireflies led me in a kind of slow dance across the breadth of the Chamber to another closed-off portal like the one that led to the Realm; I could practically hear one of the slower movements from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” playing in the background. Once I stood facing the enigmatically closed portal, the fireflies poured into the foliage in the same way they’d emerged from it. 

Just after the last of the glowing bugs entered the tightly twined branches, the plants began to rustle and shake, the outline of the portal beginning to glow. Light bathed me as the foliage peeled itself back. I knew what I had to do, of course. Once the opening was wide enough, I strode forward boldly, ready for anything—or so I thought…

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. II: Giants Ahoy!

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that I’d emerge from the portal into a cloud, but there I was. Well, it was more onto than into, as the mist was concentrated around my feet, but there were wisps trailing up and above my head in the steady breeze on my face.

I pressed on forward, feeling like every step was through thick mud, until I almost tripped on a piece of sod floating at about ankle-height. OK, this was weird. Weirder still, though, was that this turned out to be the outlying crumble from a large mass of sod floating just ahead, and by “large mass”, I mean there was no end to it in sight.

I stepped up from the mist onto the mingled soil and rocks before indulging my curiosity. Flopping down onto my belly, I reached out over the edge of the sod and into the mist. It took quite a bit more effort than I’d expected, but I was able to push a clear space in the mist eventually.

Beneath the mist was… air. It looked like this place, whatever it was, was pretty high up in the air, at that. Looking at the landscape so dizzyingly far beneath me, I realized that I could see the Royal Castle of the Realm shining in the distance, and a large blackened splotch where the Scowrers had passed through, burning everything in their wake.

At this point, I decided to see what was beneath the soil that held it up, because something in me didn’t want to believe that I was on a land that floated atop a cloud. I dug a small hole through the sod, and found that I was on a land that floated atop a cloud. This information did nothing to soothe my mind.

I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that the dirt and rocks and I myself ought all to be dropping through the cloud beneath us like it was, well, a cloud. It was then that I noticed the herd of sauropods placidly meandering a few hundred yards away. So, not only was the wispy, insubstantial water vapor beneath me holding me and a layer of rocks and soil up at an altitude that I surmised to be about ten thousand feet (a bit more than 3km) above sea level, but it was supporting a herd of hundred-plus ton (standard or metric—take your pick!) beasts as well!

Sauropods were a form of gargantuan dinosaur, and they’d supposedly gone extinct at the end of the Mesozoic with the other giant reptiles of that era. These ones looked to be diplodocoids, instead of brachiosaurs or brontosaurs, their better known cousins.

A giant strode in the midst of the sauropod herd, their backs reaching about waist-high on him; obviously, this was the herdsman. The proportionality of it meant that he had to be about one hundred and thirty feet (forty to forty-one meters, eh) tall. I swore to myself that if he started saying, “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum,” I would high-tail it back to the portal, but of course he didn’t.

This made increasingly less sense as it went along. How was this place staying up, supported by nothing more than mist? How were there fauna that had gone extinct in the Mesozoic roaming around? How were there giants that didn’t collapse under their own mass?

I had to take several deep breaths and remind myself that I had just gone through a magic door to another world; that I had seen living sporks on more than one occasion; that I had met even more gargantuan giants before; and that I didn’t really need to know everything about everything. As long as this Realm Above stayed in one piece, that should be enough for me, as long as they weren’t killing babies to keep it in the sky or something like that.

Wait, why was I having all these doubts and qualms about the impossibility of things now, instead of back when I’d first encountered these absurdities and impossibilities? The thought brought me further out of the frazzled state my mind had worked itself into by summoning my well-developed sense of paranoia: obviously, this was an attack of some kind.

You see, it’s not like the absurdity or impossibility of one or another of the things I’ve encountered hasn’t hit me before: I distinctly remember writing down an explanation of the square-cube rule and postulating various ways the giants I’d met could be averting it; it never drove my mind into such a frenzy as this was. Yep, this was definitely some kind of attack, but from whom?

Of course, the source of the attack would be irrelevant if I couldn’t fend it off or otherwise overcome it somehow, so I put my mind to that task. The question of the attack’s source would linger in my mind like a bad odor until the answer was disclosed in a strange and curious fashion—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Melegrethan’s martial arts instructions had included lessons in mental discipline—the ability a warrior needs to put aside the natural horror of being involved in a bloody battle so that said warrior can function. These lessons were useful in many other areas of life, as well, and they served me well in this instance. It took several minutes, but I was finally able to regain my equanimity.

Now that my mind was somewhat clearer, I began to attempt an analysis of the situation, but the unwelcome sensation of a spear-point pressing against my spine put any other considerations to flight. I raised my hands in the classic “I’m-not-armed” gesture and said, “I come in peace?”

“State your name and business in these lands.” The voice was gruff and wary, but I caught a hint of relief in it as well. Were the normal-sized denizens of this land used to visits from the Scowrers and their ilk?

“I am the Young Protector, and I am here on behalf of His Majesty, Alamanast of the Realm, Second of that Name, Heir to Magnatharast,” I recited.

There was a gasp at my recitation, and another voice, younger than the first, blurted out, “It’s the legends come to life!” Ironically, this was just what I’d been thinking myself.

“Hold your peace, Evan,” the first voice snapped.

“But he came from the Sealed and Barred Way, and he invoked the name of Magnatharast!”

A sigh. “If you can’t keep your yap shut, then go on ahead of us—run and tell the council what I’m bringing in, and I’ll follow with this fellow.”

The younger of the two watchmen needed no further prompting, running by me at an astonishing rate towards a cluster of buildings in the distance. Even from there, though, I could see that the city was scaled for the giants rather than regular humans, and I wondered why this council would meet there.

A prod to my spine and a sharp, “Move,” sent me stumbling in the streak’s wake. My driver’s silence gave me ample opportunity to resume my analysis of my surroundings as we went.

When Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels, he sent his hero, the eponymous Lemuel Gulliver, into a land where he was a giant (Lilliput), a land where he was surrounded by giants (Brobdingnag), and a floating island (Laputa). Swift wrote the book as a satire, so each society Gulliver met poked fun at one or more aspects of the society and nations Swift was familiar with. That being said, finding oneself in a mish-mash of stuff from such a book is still rather disorienting, to say nothing of dealing with mental attacks.

As we pressed forward towards the giant city, I only hoped that I wouldn’t run into misanthropic talking horses…

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. III: Another Branch or Two

My escort and I avoided the well-trod giant road that led to the city, instead keeping under cover of the tall weeds and grasses the sauropod herds grazed off of. This was only one of many little things that led me to believe the humans here preferred to keep out of sight of the giants whenever practical.

The giant city was walled in, which surprised me, until I realized that the walls were more or less equivalent to a waist-high keep-the-critters-out fence to the giants. My escort moved me into a crack along the base of the wall, in which we could travel unobserved. The crack led to a hole, and the hole to a (normal-sized) guard post.

My escort turned me over to the town guard, who turned me over to a special detail sent by the council (whoever they were), who lived in the house that Jack built, or something like that. Anyway, I was bundled off to this council as incommunicado as could be, but I managed to observe quite a bit about this group of humans and their living conditions.

Apparently, their entire civilization lived in the chinks, cracks, crevices and otherwise underutilized bits of the giant city, like a civilization of intelligent mice might. Since they kept other and more noxious vermin down, the giants mostly turned a blind eye to the humans living underfoot. There was also the fact that the humans never stole food from the giants, as giant food is inedible to humans.

Now, theoretically giants might appreciate human cuisine, but it can’t be made in anywhere near sufficient quantities for a giant to do more than taste-test. Consider: a fully-dressed turkey or goose would be smaller to a giant than a sugar cube would be to a human. A full-sized roasted hog might equal one of those tiny cocktail weenies people are so fond of serving as appetizers at parties. Swift made the point well enough in Gulliver’s Travels that I don’t think I need to retread that ground here.

The humans themselves seemed not overly discontent with their lot, though I knew looks could be deceptive there. One thing about people is that they have a decided ability to adjust to the circumstances they have to live with, whether good or bad, accepting them as “the way things are” and getting on with their lives regardless, for the most part. It can be a useful survival skill, but also a tool a skillful oppressor can use to their advantage.

None of the humans looked like they were starving, though very few were actually fat. That in itself was a plus.

As they had a functional civilization of their own, the giants obviously had some form of spoken communication, but none of the humans could hear it, and there was no sign that the giants could hear human speech. Something about that set-up was naggingly familiar, but (and this was rather embarrassing) it wasn’t until I saw a dog whistle make a nearby giant raise his head that I remembered why. I’d read a story some time back where the aliens and the humans couldn’t communicate at first because they heard and spoke in different frequency bands, and that was obviously the case here: the giants’ voices used ultrasonic pitches rather than human-audible ones.

I was brought before a group of men ensconced on benches high enough that I had to crane my head back to see them. It was rather a cheap trick in a land of giants, but it probably worked for them at intimidating the locals, though all it gave me was a crick in my neck and a sour disposition because of that.

I should probably enumerate and introduce in brief these councilors, though they never officially introduced themselves to me. The council had seven members, each the ruler of a district of the city, who presided over a lesser council, the members of which presided over lesser councils, and so on ad infinitum. I’m pretty sure that at some point there was a council of sheepdogs that tried errant cats for their mischief, but that’s irrelevant to the issue at hand.

The oldest and most powerful member of the council was Fred. He had a longer and more ponderous name that simply reeked of the pomposity that he wore like a cloak, but I’ll just call him Fred here. He presided over the council, choosing who could and who couldn’t speak at any given time, and other such parliamentary duties.

The council’s secretary was Glen, a mousy young fellow who might have been mistaken for a girl if not for his beard. He didn’t say much, but I thought that he would be a good candidate for “the power behind the throne” if anyone here was.

The sergeant-at-arms was a great bear of a man not unlike Melegrethan, but with a much darker mien. I wouldn’t have liked to be under his eye for any reason, so I was glad that he, like the others, studiously avoided looking at me unless it was absolutely necessary for him to do so.

Two of the councilors were brothers, the Lempreyson twins. They sat spaced as far apart as they could, and had nameplates easily visible in front of them, as well as dressing very distinctly one from the other. Despite this, the other councilors kept mixing up their names and districts, which put them out of temper.

The sixth councilor was the town miser, a thin, greedy-looking man called Nippy. All he seemed to care about was how much whatever was under discussion would cost, and whether he could snag a piece of the funds for himself.

The final and newest of the councilors was a man with a perpetual frown on his face, and who disagreed with the others on practically everything. Somehow, I knew I’d like him from the moment I laid eyes on him. I’ll relate more about him later, but for now I’ll say that he was the town doctor, as had his father before him been, and so on and so forth.

After a fairly comprehensive interrogation, they ignored me and began to discuss the problem my presence presented them amongst themselves. I was rather miffed by this; obviously, they didn’t expect me to understand their conversation, which didn’t speak highly of their opinion of people in general and me in particular.

To say they were disconcerted when I put in an observation of my own that bore on the matter under discussion would only partially convey the truth of the matter. They were frankly dismayed at my level of comprehension of their issues, irked at my temerity in daring to address their exalted persons directly without being addressed first, and taken aback by the notion that a Royal Envoy might actually not be drawn from the bottom of the barrel.

I was cuffed by the guard behind me and told to keep my mouth shut, so I did. Of course, I kept my ears open, and even though the councilors switched to much more opaque, oblique and obscure terminology, I understood well enough what they were talking about, though it would be tedious and repetitive to put it down here verbatim.

So, to sum up what they were saying, Magnatharast the Great had led a bunch of people out of some kind of really, really, really (and even that may be too few ‘reallys’) bad situation. Some of them stayed with him when he founded the Realm, while not a few others went not a few other places, like this one. All of them, though, had sworn to be true to Magnatharast and his heirs, so my arrival kind of upset their applecart.

People don’t tend to react well when their applecart is upset…

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. IV: A Summer Trap Springs at Winter’s Fall

After what seemed like hours of the council debating endlessly without any agreement on what to do about me in sight, Doctor Maxime—oh, that was his actual name: Weygand Maxime; I was acutely aware of the irony of this name—anyway, he finally insisted that the session be adjourned for the evening and that I be remanded into his custody pending the final decision of the council (assuming one would ever be reached). The others were rather suspiciously eager to agree, but at least I got to go somewhere where I could sit down; the hours of standing around had taken their toll.

Doctor Maxime had a nice little family, headed by his eldest daughter Meredith, a charming and gracious young lady of marriageable age. This fact put me a bit on edge, until she made it plain that she thought me a child, at which I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps I was egotistical to be concerned, but people have wed in the past based purely on position, and wife to the Protector of the Realm is not a position to be despised. It would not have been wise to let myself get into any entanglements of that sort with the locals, either, but fortunately, Meredith was looking for someone of age to wed, so we were able to get along fine.

The other Maxime children were relatively benign examples of their sort; being a rather solitary child by nature, I’d never had anything other than a jaundiced view of the younger lot, but the Maxime brood proved more or less harmless. One definite point in their favor was that they and I shared a disdain for what are termed “practical jokes”; it had been a point of contention at the reunion all those years ago, since most of those kin of mine in attendance there were enthusiastic practitioners of that kind of so-called humor.

At any rate, I spent a delightful evening with the Maxime family, though I kept expecting it to be cut short by an envoy from the council calling me back to face whatever punishment they’d devised for my temerity in reminding them that they were not the end-all be-all that they thought themselves. This constant expectation was somewhat annoying, like a naggingly persistent itch in a place you can’t reach unaided, though it still didn’t ruin the evening, as I said before.

The evening was instructive as well; I found out many things about these people, their ways of life and death, their understanding of their circumstances, and various and sundry other things. For example, they observed tea-time as a quasi-religious ordinance, believing it to be the key to good health, prosperity, and any number of other benefits.

Another thing I learned about these people was that, though their mode of living made open warfare more or less impossible, still they practiced a form of it in their politicking. Influence was gained and lost; families, guilds, lodges, and other such bandings together rose and fell; and sometimes, the loudest of the voices that protested the status quo would die under mysterious circumstances, or simply vanish, never to be heard from again.

I was a bit more careful about what I ate after learning that last. It wasn’t that I distrusted my hosts; it was that I was now fairly certain of what my fate would prove if left to the council—not that I had expected anything good from them at any point, either.

It actually wasn’t until well after I’d enjoyed a hearty breakfast (closer to mid-morning, in fact) that I was finally summoned to reappear before the council. Doctor Maxime was by turns abashed and apoplectic as we went to my doom, which confirmed my suspicions about the nature of their decision.

The council session was long and boring, with much back-and-forth and even more useless words in explaining my fate, as though the sheer number of these words would sweep any doubts or objections as to the wisdom of the council’s decision away. Also, they lied about how I’d come before them, and “creatively reinterpreted” my behavior and demeanor in my earlier appearance. As you might have guessed, this did not serve to raise the (lack of) esteem in which I held the council in any way.

When they finally got around to actually disclosing their decision on what should be done with me, they actually managed to surprise me by saying that I was to be sent out of the city, not to re-enter on pain of death. Not only was this rather more lenient by far than my expectations, there was something odd about how the councilors looked at each other as they announced their decision—except for Doctor Maxime, who had reversed his chair in the traditional sign of an individual councilor’s opposition to a decision taken by the full council.

They actually didn’t keep me standing around long after the pronouncement; the guards took charge of escorting my out within a few short seconds. I left the city by a completely different route than the one by which I’d entered it, as they apparently had a special gate from which they sent people into exile.

I was hurled bodily into a thick field of sunflowers around eight feet tall or so. Almost certainly, the intention was that I’d get lost in the field, allowing whatever their true designs for me—I still wasn’t buying that exile was all there was to it—were to come into play without hindrance.

The portal was to the south of the city; I had been cast out towards the east. By my estimation, I had a very long walk ahead of me were I to attempt to return to the Tree, but I had the feeling that a different fate for me was in the works.

I had just emerged from the sunflowers when a steady tapping began, though I couldn’t discern its source. It seemed to come from somewhere both far off and yet nearby. After a bit, I noted that while it was far too regular to be natural, it was still too irregular to be from some form of mechanism. In a word, the tapping seemed to be a form of communication, so I began to listen more closely, to see if I could unlock its message.

The tapping was definitely in the classic Morse code (or perhaps I simply perceived it as such, just as I keep hearing English when these people talk to me?), but just as obviously in plaintext; the sender wasn’t even trying to disguise their meaning. R-O-G-U-E I-N S-I-G-H-T (stop) W-I-L-L T-A-K-E C-A-P-T-I-V-E I-M-M-E-D-I-A-T-E-L-Y (stop).

I hate being right.

Instinctively, I readied myself for action, but in vain. The source of the tapping revealed itself to be a fairly young-ish and therefore small-ish giant, barely sixty feet high. She proved spry and nimble enough to snatch me up in one hand before I could run away, and so I was taken back into the city of the giants, but into the giants’ own areas.

I didn’t say anything, as I knew that cries or protests would be useless. Instead, I observed, as I had before. It wasn’t long before I was tossed into a wooden box or pen where a number of other humans were kept, the state of their clothes suggesting most of them had been there for quite some time. Obviously, here were those unfortunates who’d spoken out against the council and “vanished”.

So, now I was to be a captive (and more probably slave) of the giants…

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. V: It Can’t Get Worse!

The massive cheese forge stood before me, steam floating lazily from the top. Easily as tall as the giants it fed, the gargantuan tower quivered alarmingly as more and more cheese was thrown in at the top.

Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would see an honest-to-goodness cheese forge, but I’d felt the same way about the sporks infesting the Realm’s forests and many other things I’d seen on my travels.

The giants had left me in a box full of other slaves, not nearly all of whom were political prisoners. Some were more mundane criminals, but there were a few who hadn’t actually done anything; these last had simply been chosen by lot when the giants had a shortage of slaves.

I quickly learned from the others that I’d been fortunate enough to arrive on what they called a “down day”, where no work was expected of them. They also didn’t get fed, but that was less of a problem in the near term, since I’d had such a big breakfast. Water was still available at need.

The most surprising thing, however, was the kind of work we were expected to perform. The sheer size of the giants meant that cooking was actually a pretty difficult proposition for them, aside from slow-cooking, which formed the basis of most of their cuisine. They needed humans to make them other types of food, such as soups and cheeses, which could be made on our scale and accumulated into what were literally giant-sized portions; thus, the cheese forges.

Despite having witnessed it in operation, I will admit to still having some doubts about the actual quality of the final product from what amounted to the world’s largest fondue pot, but apparently the giants were all but addicted to cheese. They were also quite fond of the various soups their humans made for them.

I should probably drop a line or two here about the spectacularly weird nature of the giants’ digestive system, or systems as you could say. Physiologically, giants were just odd in so many ways. Their vertical nature made a number of changes necessary in most of their systems, because of things like the square-cube law and a number of other things that don’t affect humans because we’re too small. One of the major differences was ingestion; another was digestion.

Ingestion was a much weirder affair than with us: their mouths looked like ours on the outside, but were more like a duck’s bill on the inside. Like I said, it’s weird. They had to chew until their food was thin slime before slurping it down their throat.

Ingestion was weird because digestion was weirder. They had between twelve and twenty stomachs, depending on their age and well-being, which was why food needed to be thin slime. It’s also why they like soups so much: they don’t need to chew.

Their main foodstuff was the dinosaur I’d seen one herding earlier. The reptiles were slow-cooked until the meat was almost liquid already before it hit the plate, but there were certain enzymes or something in the meat that humans can’t digest.

Sometimes, though, the giants would pick a few of their slaves and cook them, though we were only dumpling-sized treats to them. This news, while not particularly surprising me, did rather increase the urgency of my need to escape.

For my first working shift, I was sent to the foundry to be a walker—they had a gargantuan hamster-wheel thing that would hold twenty or thirty humans at a go. The giants could easily have supplied all the motive power they needed by themselves, but they were the masters, and we were the slaves, so we walked within the wheel for hours on end.

On either side of the wheel were a pair of overseers, whose main function was to crack the whip at any sluggards when the wheel was in motion. These overseers were much more pets of the giants rather than slaves: they always had food; they lived somewhere other than the slave boxes; their shifts were shorter; and a few, a very, very few of them had a weird contrivance that looked like a stethoscope glued to a bullhorn, with which they spoke to their masters, the giants.

Apparently, I was not the only one to reason out the way the giants communicated. Once I saw it in use, that bullhorn-and-earphone set immediately topped my list of “Things I Needed to Get”. I was determined to get one, not matter the cost.

I would live to regret that determination.

After quite a bit of observation and planning, I came up with what I thought was a cunning plan: One of the overseers regularly took his on-shift meal on an observation platform rigged on a scaffolding on one of the cheese forges, so I would come up after him, disable him, and take the instrument then. It sounded easy enough that I’d be able to pull it off without a problem.

In the event, nothing at all went wrong with the whole first half or so of the plan. The overseer went on break, and I followed him. He never noticed me, though I wasn’t being particularly stealthy, especially as we were ascending the rather rickety scaffolding: I had decided that I wouldn’t do him the favor of hurtling to my death without his putting in at least some effort to arrange it, so I chose safety over stealth.

Heat and a strong smell of cheddar struck me as I reached the top of the scaffolding. Obviously, being the overseer had its downsides, too. Somehow, though, the overseer hadn’t heard my approach, so I was able to pounce upon him unawares. He was hale and strong, though, and apparently quite used to being set upon like this, so I had a fight on my hands.

After a moment of surprise, I found myself enjoying the fight. He was fast; I was faster. He was strong; I was stronger. He was—

He was dead.

Wait, how did that happen? We had just knocked each other a good one that sent us both reeling back… Oh, there it was. He’d hit his head on a little protrusion in the scaffolding when he fell back. By the time I’d gotten back to my feet, it had been over.

I looked it up later, and the legal definition of what I did is “Involuntary Manslaughter”, a nice way of saying “Accidental Murderer”. Being a murderer doesn’t feel nice.

It took the entire tower shaking like a leaf to break me out of my brooding. One of the giants had come into the foundry, and he was the giant equivalent of roaring drunk. I didn’t even want to think of what might be the cause of his intoxication; I’d learned enough about the oddities of giant physiology to leave my head spinning whenever I thought about it.

The giant knocked against the forge bearing the scaffolding I was on, and said scaffolding promptly fell apart like an ill-fastened erector set. The dead overseer and I flew into the air, but only one of us was terrified.

I landed atop the overseer’s corpse; it was the only way I survived the fall without serious injury. I also brought the apparatus that was the whole reason for the misbegotten fight in the first place through intact. A man had died over it; the least I could do was protect it.

Fumbling a little in the aftermath of the fall, I brought the bullhorn to my mouth. “You, there!” I hailed the nearby giant. “I must talk with you at once!”

Calling upon a highly intoxicated giant does not rank as one of my more well-thought-out plans. The giant looked at me as though my speaking to him was a personal affront—in fact, his expression wasn’t much different than the councilors’ had been in similar circumstance—and raised his foot, ready to stomp me flat for my impudence…

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. VI: It Got Worse

“Hold on, Dzetz!” The giant paused in mid-stomp at the reproach from a fellow giant who had come into the room just as my fate as a pancake had been determined. “We just got that one! Why on earth are you ready to stomp it after such a short exploitation?”

“It listened in on my conversation with the chief slaves! I let it pass at the time, but it wasn’t satisfied with that alone: it just stole a talky-thing and dared to address me directly, and in the rudest, most egotistical manner possible, without a word of the appropriate deferences!”

“Well, give it a freak-out or two, then! There are other things short of killing that work!” Oh, I should note here (though again, I found this out over the course of their conversation) that the giants have some esoteric method of inducing panic in humans, which explained my earlier wigging out episode on my arrival here.

“You’re too soft, Glyk; I’ve told you that a million times. Why should we flinch away from squashing these vermin whenever we like? If you won’t let me stomp him, let me eat him instead. Is that traditional enough for you?” Oh, no; he was going to start saying “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum” in another minute, wasn’t he.

Giants shake off their intoxication very quickly; this one had almost ceased to slur his words by this point in the conversation, and his arguments grew ever more rational and persuasive. They went back and forth like this for quite some time.

“They’re too dangerous; we’ll have to kill them all, and immediately!” I really wished the council could have heard the quarrel the giants were having over what to do about the humans in their midst. Not that I thought it would change their behavior in any way; I just wanted to see their expressions.

“First they’re worms beneath our notice, but now they’re too dangerous to be left alive? Pick one or the other, but don’t try to argue both at the same time.”

And they argued on, and eventually the tide began to favor the genocidal monomaniac, which was less than pleasant to hear if you were part of the geno- he wished to -cide. I can’t say that his evaluation of mankind as “too dangerous for another intelligent species to enslave and then let live” isn’t true, though; the history of various slave rebellions stands as witness to that.

So now I had to bring down the giants while taking the council out with more or less no help from anyone. Well, this should be easy (ha, ha, ha).

Well, my first order of business had to be getting away from the giant who wanted to kill me and back to the human settlements (as such). I could come back for the slaves later, as I had a feeling the slave pens would be easier to open from the outside.

In other words, I needed to run like my pants were on fire, so I did.

Finding my way back to the human habitations was both harder and easier than I'd thought; harder because they were in a completely different part of the city; and easier because, however well-concealed they might be to the giants, they weren't really hidden at all from a human's point of view.

Of course, even among the local humans I would be a marked man, which implied the necessity of a disguise of some sort. I was just ready to take on the mantle of Peg-Leg Pete the Parroty Pirate when who should I meet but Meredith Maxime, who quickly put an end to that folly.

Meredith turned out to be the Unseen Hand behind her father’s political career: while he ably filled any office he was elected to, she was the one who ensured his election. When I filled her in on the secret slave situation, she had a plan of attack on the council front worked out in mere moments, a plan her father heartily endorsed when he was brought in on it.

The three of us stormed into the council chambers, the door slamming open for like the crack of doom, and the expression on the other councilors’ faces was priceless. The Lempreysons looked shocked and a tad frightened, never having encountered such determination before from the hoi polloi; Nippy clutched at his moneybag in a manner reminiscent of DaVinci’s ‘The Last Supper’; the sergeant-at-arms wore a scowl only a little fiercer than his usual one; Fred looked pompously put out; and Glen—

Glen looked coolly back at us, his face a picture of arrogant certitude in his place. We meant to knock that certitude away.

After a few opening flourishes, the session quickly shifted into a duel between the powers-behind-the-thrones, Glen and Meredith volleying by-laws and points of order back and forth in an attempt at supremacy. Eventually, Meredith having won a round, I stated what I had seen and done after the ‘exile’; Doctor Maxime made a motion to do something about it; and the duel resumed, the other five watching in bemusement and occasionally putting a tentative suggestion out that was promptly annihilated by both duelists.

Glen was looking a lot less assured of himself, but ever more grimly determined. Neither was the duel entirely one-sided; several times, Meredith muttered darkly after Glen blocked her from a promising line of attack. Both pressed on, though, each striving to deliver the final stroke that would win the match.

Talk talk talk talk talk. Talk talk, talk talk talk talk. An increasingly large part of me wanted to take up a blunt instrument and just start bashing everyone in sight until all the talking ended. I noticed the sergeant-at-arms looking like he felt the same way, but we both held our peace as the interminable talking went on.

Eventually, Meredith won, by which I mean that the council agreed that this should be taken up by the Grand Council, which was this council plus the next layer of councils down. I really hoped the giants were as bound by procedures and such as the humans, because if they weren’t, Plan “Get Rid of All the Humans” would go into effect before the opening statements before the Grand Council were finished.

Fortunately, the urgency of the situation seemed to have leaked through all the parliamentary nonsense, so assembling the Grand Council took less than an hour. Talk talk talk talk talk. I said my bit again; Doctor Maxime made his motion again; and Meredith—wait, she was calling for the council to be impeached?

Apparently, all the preliminary blather was an assertion of the unfitness of the current council based on their reaction to the obvious and immediate danger posed by the giants. OK; they’d decided the giants were dangerous and that the council had erred in ignoring that. What were they going to actually do about the problem?

Talk talk talk talk talk. All the councilors except Doctor Maxime were on the chopping block and were struggling mightily to keep their positions. Talk talk talk.

Suddenly, everything went quiet. After a moment, Meredith repeated her last motion, which was, “In accordance with the charter and compact between our forebears and Magnatharast the Great, Lord of the Trees, I move that we yield our power of diplomacy to the Envoy Plenipotentiary from Alamanast the Heir of Magnatharast; that he treat, barter and otherwise negotiate with the giants on our behalf as well as that of the Realm Proper; and that the results of said negotiation be regarded as binding as would the work of this Grand Council.”

I should have seen that coming, shouldn’t I?

Now I just had to work out how to finagle the giants, assuming it wasn’t too late; but maybe the Scowrers, the sporks and the centaurs would be of aid there…

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. VII: Wrapping Up, Going Down

Well, now I was the envoy both from the Realm and from whatever this bunch of humans called themselves to the giants, but how was I supposed to get their attention? I mean, going up to the nearest giant and demanding the traditional “Take me to your leader!” was all well and good, unless the giant refused.

I might be stuck, but, the value of appearances to these people having just been impressed upon me, I was not going to let them see that I was stuck until people were dropping dead around me. Hopefully, though, it wouldn’t come to that.

I was fiddling with what the giant had called the ’talky-thing’ as I strode forth from the hidden portal between the human areas and the giants’ dominion. There were a few giants just ahead of me, and when my fingers slipped in the thing’s innards, they stumbled, falling to their knees and clapping their hands to their ears.

So, the bullhorn could do feedback squeals in the giants’ audible range that were fairly powerful (possibly even debilitating?). This was perhaps the most promising thing I had discovered in some time, and how sad was that?

OK, now was the time for tradition. I walked boldly up to the nearer giant, who was still on her knees after the aural assault, threw a rock at her forehead to get her attention, and said through the bullhorn, “TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!”

I can only think that the tableau that followed was quite ridiculous in appearance: the hundred-and-thirty-foot giant stayed on her knees; she then bent towards me, the five-foot human, in a pose of supplication; and finally she started outright begging me to just let her be. From what she said, I gathered the leaders of the giants were no more interested in mingling with the hoi polloi than Glen had been, so they’d set a rule that the penalty for disturbing the ruling council (Gee, how surprising that the giants and the humans both had similar forms of government. Why couldn’t Meredith have accompanied me?) was death.

Eventually, I managed to convince the woman (Her name was Thalia, and she was a washerwoman by trade, but more on that later) that I would guarantee her safety before the council, so she put me on her shoulder and thus took me to the chamber where the ruling council of the giants was deliberating the genocide of all the humans.

It didn’t surprise me that the two giants I’d witnessed arguing earlier were prime members of the council; that the first giant I’d seen, a lowly herdsman of the reptiles, had a seat on the council was a surprise, though. It transpired that his seat was a sop to the lower orders, and so he stayed silent for the most part. The few things he did venture to say were either agreements with the majority or discounted as folly by the other councilors. I decided to see if I could change that before this was all over.

Much to my surprise, it didn’t take much time or effort to hammer out an agreement between the giants and the humans both of the Realm and the giants’ city. Once informed that the Realm existed; that the humans there were ready to come to either aid or avenge their fellow humans up here; that the Realm had recently driven off the Scowrers (of whom even the giants were aware and wary); and that there could be mutual trade and other benefits from a peaceful arrangement between giants and humans, the giants (the genocidal jerk excepted) were perfectly willing to talk turkey.

In a nutshell, I got the human slavery ended; the human settlement here recognized as a fief of the Realm; preliminary trade deals and a framework for making more such deals in future; and a mutual defense arrangement between humans and giants. All this took less time than the first session I’d endured of the humans’ high council.

The giants would have a representative on the human high council, of course, and vice versa, and a giant and Meredith Maxime would be returning to the Realm proper with me. How would these matters of size work out, you ask? It turned out that there was, of all things, an apple for that.

When I went back into the Chamber of the Tree, I found that a small sapling that yet already bore several ripe apples on its slender branches had sprung up next to the portal, with a sign attached to it that read,

“Eat Me” and “Drink Me”  
Were Alice’s sign  
So shall you also  
From this fruit of mine

And, of course, a giant who ate one of its apples became human-sized (Eight foot seven is still human-sized) until that giant ate another of the apples, which returned the giant to normal. So the envoys to the Realm and to the council wouldn’t necessitate major disruptions to either, which was good. Oh; the apples had no effect on normal humans, by the way.

Doctor Maxime was confirmed as president of the human high council, and thus ‘ruler of the fief’, which made Meredith the proper person to act as envoy between her people and the Realm. Her father’s future campaigns were left in the hands of his next oldest daughter, whom Meredith had been grooming for a while in case something untoward happened. So everything was well in hand on the human side, as it were.

The giants chose Thalia as their first envoy to the Realm, giving her a little communicator box to relay important stuff back to them. She was a bit uncertain at first, but once she met Meredith, that worthy managed to assuage most of Thalia’s doubts.

Thalia and Meredith actually got along very well as the three of us made our way back from the Chamber of the Tree past the Hand-Spread to the Castle of the Realm. It definitely seemed that things were getting off to a good start there.

They were both favorably impressed by the Castle, as well they should be. They were even more favorably impressed by their reception as envoys, which was all that it should have been in their eyes.

Any worries I may have had about how Meredith, or Merry, as she insisted on being addressed, would get along as the envoy of her fief to the Realm were banished when she and Perethegrast, my friend Perry and the Heir to His Majesty Alamanast, took one look at each other and started grinning goofily. Any worries that this unexpected development would hobble her as the envoy of her fief were assuaged by her introductory address to the King and her fellow envoys, which was a most diplomatic way of saying she would guard her homeland’s interests to the fullest extent of her abilities and anyone who crossed her would have to watch out.

Thalia, as the ambassador of an allied but separate nation, was a little more diplomatic, but essentially made the same points Merry had, with due deference to His Majesty and a few remarks on “hoping the interests of the Realm would march alongside those of her people for some time to come” and so forth.

This being the Realm, there was a feast to welcome the envoy and the ambassador. It seemed that the most recent harvests had finally been decent ones, so it was a real feast rather than a few small plates of this and that that everyone had to pretend was a real feast.

Merry and Perry were still beaming goofily at each other when Alamanast had Melegrethan recall me (finally). It would seem that this was the beginning of something good indeed…

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. VIII: Back to Mission Control

“You know, I’m starting to wonder if you actually do know what I’m supposed to do on these missions.” I meant what my ‘mission objectives’ were, rather than what my exact actions would be; fortunately, the former was how Melegrethan took my statement to mean.

We were back in the debriefing room, of course. I had summarized the course of the mission (this time, it wasn’t quite as absurd-sounding as the last) and answered quite a number of elucidatory questions before essaying that thought which had been rolling around in my mind for the entire session.

“Why would I send you on an unknown mission, then?” Melegrethan’s tone was completely placid; he showed no offense at the rather provocative nature of my statement. Were we in one of his martial arts classes, he would immediately and without hesitation discipline a student who challenged him so, but I suppose the nature of our debriefing sessions is another matter entirely.

“The same faith you expect of me.” He smiled at that, so I continued, “While I appreciate that you follow the same paths that you desire me to walk in, stepping into a situation like that last one blind could well spell disaster for the next mission. If either the humans or the giants had been more inclined to take action rather than simply to talk, it could have meant war, insofar as men can war against giants.”

Melegrethan sighed. “In that case, I would have given you what you needed to accomplish your mission, as I did with this. If I’d told you what you would be facing, you might have been predisposed to favor one side or the other, or not so motivated to bring them together peacefully as quickly as you did.”

I hate when Melegrethan’s right almost as much as I hate when I’m right.

I decided to change the subject. “So, it looked like Merry and Perry were getting along like a house on fire, didn’t it?” I had gone into some detail on that matter already, as they had both been good friends to me during our limited time together. When Melegrethan simply smiled again, I pressed on. “How do you think that’s going to work out, what with him being the Heir and her the envoy?”

“You shall find out soon enough, though not for a good bit, either,” Melegrethan contradicted himself obliquely before explaining, “Your next foray shall tell you, but your next foray will not be for a space of time long enough that your absence will look suspicious.”

Of course my next mission would be sufficiently belated not to arouse suspicion; it must, otherwise we risked exposure. I hated the necessity, though, each and every day that I had to wait. I was and am unashamedly greedy for as many excursions into the Realm (and environs) as I could undertake.

“As to your late mission, you did very well, of course—” Wait, was that praise from Melegrethan? “—though you might yet need to learn the value of what you called ‘all that blathering’, both as a strategy and as a weapon, which I find ironic in someone with doctorates in history and literature. Perhaps some remedial instruction in those fields, with an emphasis on politics and diplomacy rather than economics and personalities would not come amiss?”

I shrugged. I like studying history more than most of my crafts classes, though I dislike trying to grope my way through the labyrinthine twists that politics tended to take. This was another reason I have tried to isolate myself from my fellow campers: I had and have no interest in trying to enter into the mini-politics of camp society. What few friends I do have, I can’t be honest with, anyway, and that tends to strain even the best friendships. Best to keep things light for now.

Really, I disliked the entire business of trying to get to the top of the dog-pile and stay there, regardless of merit or character. In accordance with the camp’s primary objective of building character, the staffers tried to enforce a social system that rewarded character, but there was and would always be a parallel stratification based on all the old and hoary staples of politics: getting people what they wanted, struggling for power and influence, maintaining one’s ego and pride, and all the rest of it.

“Very well. You shall begin a long and in-depth course of study on the history and politics of the Byzantine Empire at the beginning of next week.” Oh, wonderful.

I pulled a face at having to learn about the politics of the people who had given their name to ‘overly complex and well-nigh-indecipherable politics’, but Melegrethan smiled again. I distrusted that smile intensely.

“I think, Young Protector, that you will find the course of study fascinating.” He might be decidedly wrong in that opinion, though. Time will tell. “And it will be at your intellectual level, rather than that of your cohort, so don’t worry about that.”

He sent me off to the library to get the first of the new textbooks that I would be using. As I was leaving, I noticed that one staffer I’ve mentioned before. He was lingering a bit too casually outside the debriefing room when I emerged, though he seemingly took no notice of me.

The camp’s library was one of the more pleasant surprises; it was well-stocked, well-organized, and well-run, so they had my book for me in mere moments. I was actually thinking about trying to see if I could help out there after the mentorship was over and I could do various volunteer work around the camp. For now, though, I could only lightly dip into the pool of knowledge the library held.

And again that one staffer seemed unnaturally interested in me and my dealings with one Mel Grethan: he was watching from across the way as I came out from the library, though again, he stayed clear of me. This time, he was in a small knot of staffers engaged in small talk during their break, but only he was watching me as I went about my business.

I asked Melegrethan about this when I returned with my textbook, but he said, “Mister Price has been following you, has he? Well, you should stay clear of him when possible, though I cannot reveal more about that matter yet. You should not be concerned just yet, though. The things that are in the wind will not come to fruition any time soon.”

This vague little tidbit was in no way reassuring, but I tried to pretend to be relieved. I have a feeling Melegrethan saw through me though, but he simply sent me off again, for dinner this time.

Perhaps I should bring the matter up to Mrs Hoffy, the head of the camp, or her right-hand man, Mr Duke. Then again, that might bring unwanted attention to Melegrethan and myself, so I probably shouldn’t. Of course, I might watch to see if this Mr Price was watching anyone else so intently, and report on that if so. That idea bore greater consideration, but it might take more subtlety than I personally possess. Hmmmm.

Dinner that evening was a plate of cheeses and apple slices, due to the hot spell the camp had been sweating under. No one at my table understood my laughter at the cuisine; I suppose they thought it one more way in which I was a weirdo.

THUS ENDS

Realms Above

Being the Tenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

THE STORY CONTINUES WITH

The Ship/Shape/Span of the World, by a Spick

Being the Eleventh Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion


End file.
